Any moves toward a fiscal union among the eurozone countries as a solution to the region's ongoing debt crisis will only create an even worse political crisis, a veteran British journalist said at a recent seminar in Tokyo.
"A European fiscal union that many people seem to think is inevitable ... implies a European government and a European Parliament with real teeth ... and now you're talking about a United States of Europe," said Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, international business editor of The Daily Telegraph. "This is an enormous step for the historic nation-states in Europe, and there is no popular consent to such a move."
Speaking March 25 during the seminar organized by the Keizai Koho Center, Evans-Pritchard discussed the eurozone crisis from the viewpoint as a longtime critic of the European common currency, from which Britain, as a member of the European Union, has stayed away from since the euro's launch in the late 1990s.